Top1105

I would prefer if Audi still included a touch screen and allowed the user to use whatever interface they want. Sometimes it's quick and easy to select something on a screen, other times I rather use the MMI interface. Typing is also a lot easier with a touchscreen keyboard.

superswiss

Audi is including a touchpad for that purpose. The top of the rotarty **** is a touchpad. You can use it to type by simply drawing letters with your finger.

Top1105

I know about the touchpad, but I still can't type as fast on it. It's also hard for me to get it to recognize similar characters such as: _-/0o1il.,t+

yareally

Subjective. Many touchscreen UIs are quite bad and simple actions are not on the root screen of the UI (like open the sunroof on the tesla). I'm a software developer and I still consider touchscreen UIs for cars to be mostly in the area of "not ready yet" when you have to actually look at them to find what you want.

superswiss

Just out of curiosity, under what circumstances do you need some of these characters? I personally have almost no need to enter text into the MMI. For the operations that would require text input, I use voice control (i.e. Google search, calling a contact/phone number, entering an address, etc.) or I use the MMI connect app or Google Maps to send destinations to the car in advance. Contacts sync from my phone, so I would never enter a contact on the MMI.

Agreed. I find the gesture control that BMW has implemented in the new 7 series intriguing, but it doesn't work reliably from what I've seen. BMW also added a touchscreen to the 7 series, but still has the external controls and said gesture control and of course voice control. Perhaps, that's not such a bad approach. You can choose the input method most suitable for the situation. Limit touch control to when stationary for example and the other methods for when you are moving. I totally dislike Tesla's approach where everything has to be done through the touchscreen. I like having dedicated buttons for things like the sunroof, drive mode selection, sunshade etc. These are things I operate while driving and the last thing I want is having to take my eyes of the road and touch my way through a touchscreen UI to operate these functions.

yareally

I wouldn't mind the touchscreen as well under those use cases. They should be geared towards tasks you do in the car while stationary or the touchscreen UI has redundant physical buttons for tasks one performs the most.

Top1105

Often when finding an unknown place? Especially the 0o1ilt ,most street names contain those. EX) 100 South Arlington Drive would contain most of those letters. Some POIs I have entered in the past contained .-/

superswiss

I could swear it was predictive, so for example if you are entering the house number it recognizes only numbers and won't confuse the letter O with zero for example. Anyway, as I said I rarely ever type an address. So much more efficient and easier with voice command. Just say Enter address and then speak the whole address at once. It's so much faster, too, at processing a spoken address on the new system, compared to the older systems. Same for POIs. Just say "Google search McDonald's' for example to get up to date POIs through Google Local Search, or even narrow it down to a particular city by saying "Google search McDonald's in New York".

Top1105

A lot of those has not worked well for me. For example, predictive will start searching addresses far away/irrelevant from me until I get specific enough, by then I'm almost done spelling the entire thing anyway. Voice search works 70% of the time for me, "ProTint" would be "Pro Tint" with a space in the middle and would not show up. Uncommon things would also be unrecognized, such as building names.

Anyways, the point is a lot of this is solvable if Audi just added a touch screen. I'm not saying Audi should ONLY have a touch screen, but rather allowed the user to use what they prefer. A digitizer for the screen to make it touch sensitive is $50-$100, if even that much in a mass produced product? Then it just requires programming, which should be relatively simple.

Another solution, that would work on the cars we already have, is if Audi updated the software so that touchpad would work as a cursor on the screen if needed. Like on a laptop. Then I can select what I want, type on a keyboard, without even requiring a touch screen.

Erasmus354

Typically touchscreen interfaces are bad for cars. The lack of proper tactile feedback makes interacting with them while driving hit or miss at best. This is in addition to the problem of keeping the screen visible through the aforementioned fingerprints. Personally I am glad it isn't a touchscreen.


It shouldn't be a problem. A retractable screen is going to be subject to the same environmental problems that a non-retractable screen will. SAE standards for designing components on the dash and right under the dash are pretty much the same. (also ridiculous, something like 130C)